


Science Fair

by AmeliaFriend



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: First Meeting, FitzSimmons Secret Santa, Gen, Science Fair, Teenage!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:13:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2826275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmeliaFriend/pseuds/AmeliaFriend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teenage FitzSimmons meeting for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Science Fair

**Author's Note:**

> So uh – vaguely teenage!FitzSimmons first meeting with no real plot in the slightest but it was fun to write.  
> Prompted ‘Science Fair’ by Sorrowandtearsturnintowords. They are at a Science Fair, competing in a Science Fair even, so technically I stuck to the prompt. I hope you like it.
> 
> Word of warning - I haven't actually written fanfiction in almost a year so...

The boy flinched as _something_ , slipped from the table and landed on the ground with an ominous clatter.

“I’m so, so sorry.” A girl’s voice began apologising at once, but he ignored her spinning around on the spot to see what had fallen.

“Of course it would be you Snow,” he muttered under his breath picking up the black plastic briefcase style box up from the floor.

He flipped open the lid quickly to find … Snow still securely in her holding place and (thankfully) in one piece. He did have other models, working models with him even, but Snow was the first one. And she was his favourite.

“It’s not broken is it?” The girl piped up yet again. “What did you call it? Snow? Is it okay?”

Picking it out of the foam casing, he held the small device to his eye, and then he sighed in relief.

“No thanks to you, yes.”

“Oh, that’s good. I am really sorry.” She paused. “Is that Snow? The helicopter?” She asked, honestly curious, peering over his shoulder. “It looks really cool. What does it do?”

He _knew_ she was only trying to make conversation, he knew that but it was only ten o’clock in the morning, and he had already been up for almost six hours. And also, hey, she had just almost ruined his project he’d spent the last _year_ on, so maybe he didn’t feel quite like playing ‘Twenty Questions’ or whatever she wanted to turn this into.

“Okay, first of all, it’s not a _helicopter_ ,” he really didn’t mean to make his voice so sharp. “Note the completely different shape to your standard helicopter, and look one, two, three, four rotors. That makes it a _quad_ -copter, and it has its own name – it’s a ‘Drone Wirelessly Automated to Retrieve Forensics’, and in time it will help…”

“It’s a DWARF? A _DWARF_ called Snow?” She butted in almost instantly, genuine humour infused in her voice – she wasn’t being malicious, or even teasing – she just actually found it funny.

He didn’t.

“Yes.” He finally snapped with a firm frown. “Is there a problem with that?”

Her eyes widened, realising she had offended him, “No, no not at all,” she tried to placate, “It’s just most people wouldn’t name their science project after Disney, and especially not Snow White. It’s just different.”

 

She paused for a moment, thinking her words carefully through in her head. “I think we started off on the wrong foot. Can we try again?”

She didn’t wait for a reply before she stuck out her hand, obviously intending for him to shake it, “Hi. My name’s Jemma, what’s your name?”

He ignored the hand instead focusing on the last minute revisions of the technology in front of him.

But he looked up, giving the terse reply of, “Fitz” in the hopes that it would shut her up, even temporarily.

No such luck.

“That’s a surname, not an actual name.”

“It’s the name everyone calls me.”

“There’s a girl at my school that everyone calls Not-Katie. Doesn’t mean it’s her name.”

“Don’t you have anything you need to be doing right now?” He was trying to distract her from his name, and not very subtly either.

It worked though.

“Oh, I’ve been here for hours already. Done everything I needed to, everything I wanted to, and it all twice. Now I’m seeing what everyone else has done, and apparently bumping into strangers along the way.”

“Lucky for some,” he muttered, then grinning as Snow flickered online lighting up with green and red.

 

Jemma had moved up a little closer while his back was turned.

“So…” she drew the word out, startling him as she got back to her seeming goal of ‘interrogate the poor boy who happened to be near her’. “You’re Scottish…”

He raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘ _whatever gave you that impression’_ , and she waved a hand vaguely in his direction to shush him, and continued on regardless.

“Where in Scotland are you from anyway?”

“Glasgow. You?” He didn’t really care, but it was the polite thing to ask, and she might shut up when she finishes asking her (many, many) questions.

“Ashburton.” His expression must have made it very clear he had absolutely no idea where that was, because she quickly added on. “That’s down in Devon.”

The silence following that stretched awkwardly for a few moments, before she … before _Jemma_ felt compelled to break it.

He was perfectly fine with the silence.

 “What does she do? Snow I mean? Assuming you even refer to Snow as a girl, I mean, I know it’s a reference to the Disney princess, it is a reference to the Disney princess right. Because you wouldn’t get this far just for building a hel… a quad-copter, you can get kits to do that. So she, it, whatever, has got to _do_ something. And what’s even in the other cases? Other quad-copters? And oh, I’m babbling, I really should stop talking now shouldn’t I.” She didn’t even breathe between her sentences, she was taking so quickly.

“Yes” Fitz’s short reply, pulling out the three fold tablet he had been keeping securely in his bag.

Then he sighed, “The simple answer is that Snow scans things. If I turned her on right now she could get the dimensions of this room accurate to point one of a millimetre within thirty seconds.”

“That is really cool,” she was being truthful, and he began to suspect she didn’t have any other setting. “What’s in the other cases? Dopey and Grumpy and the rest?”

Coming from anyone else, that might have sounded sarcastic, but she couldn't have sounded anything other than completely sincere.

* * *

“And then Dopey could smell!” She cried excitedly, sniffing loudly and enthusiastically to punctuate her point.

Fitz couldn’t quite hide his smile, imitating her expression.

“How would a machine even _smell_?” He asked incredulously.

“Well, _I_ don’t know. Mechanics is _your_ area after all.” She grinned as an elder voice called in from the hall outside.

“Jemma! Jemma! You have to be coming now.”

Jemma’s eyes widened. “Mum!” she half-whispered. “I completely forgot…”

“Why you were even here in the first place?” Fitz offered, amused at her.

“I’ve got to go,” she was all of a sudden quite frantic, glancing around to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything she would need.

“Jemma!” the voice called again, almost in the doorway.

She stood up quickly, “I’ll find you later,” she called, “And then you can tell me how to make a machine smell!”

And with that she disappeared from sight.

 

 

* * *

It was almost four hours later that he saw her again, the day practically finished.

She came bounding round the corner, a grin on her face. A grin that he couldn’t help but return.

“Well… I believe you promised to tell me how to make a machine smell.” She demanded jokingly.

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“And how do you remember it?”

 


End file.
